A Sailor's Woolwork Picture, "Woolie," of the Six-masted Sail and Steamship The Great Eastern (1865)

Designed by Isambad Kingdom Brunel and built by J. Scott Russell & Co. at Millwall Yards on the Thames, London, 1854-57, the "Great Eastern" was the largest ship of its time. It traveled to American a number of times and became the ship which lay the much of the transatlantic telegraph cable system between Britain and The United States. Under Sir James Anderson she laid 4,200 km (2,600 statute miles) of the 1865 transatlantic telegraph cable. Under Captains Anderson and then Robert Halpin, from 1866 to 1878 the ship laid over 48,000 km (26,000 nautical miles) of submarine telegraph cable including from Brest, France to Saint Pierre and Miquelon in 1869, and from Aden to Bombay in 1869 and 1870. The image depicted in this woolie shows the ship before it was converted to allow it to lay cable.